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“I didn’t participate,” Kean grumbled and Kodi rolled her eyes at him.
“That doesn’t make you special,” a pale man shouted at Kean, accent thick. A few of the others came up and joined ragging on the lumberjack.
“Is it always like this?” I asked Kodi, both of us slowly stepping back as the men got rowdy.
“Yeah. Like I said, your kid’s gonna have a lot of uncles. The team is pretty much a family.”
I hummed and watched the team’s dynamics play out, just like watching my kids at recess. They argued, they shoved, but the overall vibe was playful.
“Leah, right?” I turned to see a Black man with short, tight curls holding out a water bottle. “My mom had my little sister when I was fifteen and I remember her getting dehydrated a lot the first few months.”
“Oh, thank you.” I took the bottle, planning to just take a sip to be polite, but ended up downing the whole thing. “Actually, thank you. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was.”
“No problem,” he said and left.
“That’s Carter. He doesn’t talk much, but he’s a good dude … and probably the most mature of the group.”
“Well he’s my favorite right now,” I said, tilting the bottle up to see if there were any droplets left.
“Fuck,” Rosa shouted, out of breath as she joined us on the field. “I should’ve made Carmen go get these.”
“Get what?” Kodi asked just as Rosa opened her bag and pulled out a bunch of wrapped candy, plopping them in my free hand.
“These are ginger candies, they help with nausea,” she explained, taking another handful from her bag and shoved them into mine. “I get carsick, so I always keep a bag or two on hand.”
“Wait, I don’t want you to be without them,” I said, trying to disrupt her candy transfer.
“No, no, it’s fine. We just stocked up on our last trip home.”
“Home as in not the US?” I asked and when she nodded, I followed up with a panicked, “Did you stock up on these ’cause you can’t get them here?”
Rosa hummed and picked up one of the candies, unraveling the back flap of the wrapper. “I don’t know. It’s kinda just tradition to stock up on our trips back. I’ve never actually looked to see if they’re sold in the US. But it’s fine,” she said, waving away my concerns. “I almost never go through ‘em all anyway.”
“She doesn’t,” a Latino man said, coming up behind Rosa and wrapping her arm around her waist. “But if we don’t visit the local shop, she gets pissy.”
“It’s bad luck not to go!” She nudged him with her elbow, but he just held her closer and kissed the top of her head. She muttered something under her breath in Spanish, nudging him again.
“Are you gonna take the candies?” Niall asked, popping up beside me.
“It’d be rude not to,” I said, trying to fight the softness the gesture inspired. But when I looked down at my bag stuffed with ginger candy, I smiled.
“Why does she get to give you stuff?” Niall asked, voice low so no one else could hear him, brow furrowed when I looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when I offered to get you something—” he started and I nudged him in the side.
“I get the feeling you wanna pay for the whole pregnancy. That’s a helluva lot different than giving me candies you already have.” I rolled my eyes and he huffed a little. I let him pout a little, mostly because I got the impression he doesn’t pout a lot and it was cute coming from a put-together man. But then I conceded ever so slightly, because Niall was right and to make this work, we needed to be friends. “But you can get me those compression socks you told me about if that’ll make you feel better.”
The Shift
Niall
“Are your teammates normally that … high energy?” Leah asked when everyone finally decided to call it a day and stop gawking at my soon-to-be co-parent.
I kind of hated calling her that. It was cold and long and awkward to say. Every time I said it, I got an odd look and I could tell everyone who knew me could see how wrong the term felt.
But it made Leah comfortable, it eased the tension between her shoulders, it let her accept something from me. I mean, it was just socks, but that was better than nothing.
